At 2:13 A.m., She Drank Alone — Unaware The Mafia Boss Had Been Watching Her All Night
## Chapter 5
Declan guided her out the back exit of the Obsidian Room. The freezing Chicago rain immediately soaked her hair, but she barely felt it. Waiting in the rain-slicked alleyway was a fleet of armored matte black Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUVs, engines rumbling with a deep, menacing growl.
Liam opened the heavy bulletproof rear door of the lead G-Wagon. Declan practically lifted Meline into the back seat, sliding in right beside her. The doors slammed shut, sealing them inside the soundproof, leather-upholstered cabin, the outside world — the rain, the sirens that would surely come, the bodies still cooling on the Obsidian Room’s hardwood floor — falling away as though none of it had ever touched them at all.
“Drive,” Declan ordered the driver. “Take us to the penthouse at the St. Regis, and call Dr. Gallagher. Tell him to meet us there. The girl is going into shock.”
As the heavy armored vehicle tore out of the alley and sped onto Lower Wacker Drive, Meline huddled against the far window, pulling Declan’s jacket tighter around herself. She stared at the passing blur of city lights, her mind completely fractured, watching the reflections of neon signs smear across the wet glass like something out of a fever dream she couldn’t wake herself from no matter how hard she tried.
Twelve hours ago, she was agonizing over flower arrangements for a wedding at the Drake Hotel. Now she was an accomplice to a multi-million-dollar money laundering scheme, a target for the Russian mafia, and a captive of the Irish syndicate’s most ruthless kingpin.
Declan poured a measure of water from the vehicle’s built-in minibar and pressed the crystal glass into her trembling hands. “Drink,” he instructed gently. She took a sip, her teeth chattering against the rim of the glass.
“What happens now?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper over the hum of the SUV’s powerful V8 engine. “When you get your money back from the Russians, what happens to me?”
Declan leaned back against the plush leather seat, his sharp, aristocratic features cast in the shadows of the passing streetlights. He looked at her not as a prisoner, but as something precious he had just discovered in the wreckage of a storm, the way a man might look at a ledger that finally balanced after years of columns that refused to add up.
“You think this is just about the money, Meline?” Declan asked quietly. “Bradley Carmichael is going to pay for his theft with his life. The Russians will pay for stepping into my territory with blood. But you, you are the unexpected variable. You are the loophole.”
“I don’t understand,” she breathed. “You will,” Declan promised, his eyes darkening with a dangerous, calculated hunger. “By sunrise, you will understand exactly where you belong.” Outside, the last of the storm was beginning to break apart over the lake, the first gray edge of dawn still hours away, though something in his voice made it sound as though he were already standing on the other side of it, waiting for her to catch up.